Students’ use of reading strategies: a survey study of grade 9 efl students at Nonkhor school

This study aimed to investigate the English reading strategies used by grade 9 students at Nonkhor School while reading materials in English. The participants in this study were 30 grade 9 students at Nonkhor School, who were studying in a second semester of the academic year 2017. The questionnaires in this study were adapted from the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) developed by Mokhtari and Sheorey, (2002) with a 5-point Likert scale. Descriptive statistics used to analyze the data were frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. Based on statistical data, the overall results revealed that all of the 16 items included in the survey were all used by the students with different frequencies. In addition, the findings also showed that on average, using reference material (e.g a dictionary), decoding of the meaning and translating the texts into Thai were most frequently used, whereas transferring information from a the text to some kind of grid or matrix least frequently used. The findings from this study can help teachers develop teaching methods and materials in such a way that they enhance and improve these reading strategies.